


rascal; or, the ballad of the second forsythe pendleton jones

by Em11134



Series: ballads [3]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, Oh: and unrequited love, and of course: more blood, fp jones is egocentric and unselfaware, more bad marriages and bad parenting, more disillusionment, more self-delusion, no nietzsche but there’s some springsteen in there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-29
Updated: 2018-06-29
Packaged: 2019-05-30 16:04:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15100247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Em11134/pseuds/Em11134
Summary: Eight vignettes from the tragic life of FP Jones II.





	rascal; or, the ballad of the second forsythe pendleton jones

**verse one**

FP vrooms his plastic truck across the teacher’s desk. He sees a girl with blue eyes and blonde hair, and says, “You look like a princess.” She nods at him. She lifts a jar full of twinkling lights.

The girls scream and the boys laugh, “Bedbug Alice!” She wrinkles the lace hem of her pink cotton dress in her little fists, so FP opens the jar to let the twinkles out. The other girls scream and climb on their desks, and his plastic truck falls and cracks.

At the playground, Alice kisses his cheek. The older boys smirk when they see it, hand him a cigarette and light it for him. He breathes in, coughs, laughs, cracks his neck. He hands the cigarette to Alice.

Later, his father, the first Forsythe Pendleton Jones, tells his mother, “That boy is trouble. The ringleader, the teacher says.” She laughs and wipes sugary hands on a green apron with a ruffle hem. She kisses his cheek. “Oh, boys will be boys, won’t they, my little rascal?”

 **verse two**  

Boys in letterman jackets are trouble, but nobody minds. FP is a football star. The older boys watch him from the stands, frowning. The girls watch him, smiling, as they lick at their cherry popsicles. They watch him even as they share milkshakes with other boys. Good ol’ Fred, with his gentle eyes, slaps FP’s back, laughs, and tosses him a bandage for the scrape on his hand. Alice scoffs, “It’s just a little blood.”

His father meets him outside the locker room. He says, “Your mother is gone. Her heart wasn’t working.” Alice kisses FP’s cheek and says, “We’ll find a new family.”

 

Boys in leather jackets are trouble, and everybody minds. His princess is now an Acid Queen, and he will be an outlaw king. Springsteen sings, “You ain’t a beauty, but hey, you’re alright,” and Alice scoffs. She knows she is the prettiest. Alice scratches FP’s back with her red painted nails, just how he likes it, and her moans echo in the empty pipe.

At the playground, FP flexes hands that smell like cigarettes, and his knuckles crack and bleed. Good ol’ Fred tosses him a bandage, and he shrugs, “It’s just a little blood.”

FP springs open his brand-new silver switchblade, and his pockets fill with damp and crumpled tens and twenties. FP learns facts about serpents.

**verse three**

His Acid Queen wears another boy’s letterman jacket over her pink silk dress with a lace hem. She shares a milkshake with the other boy, who has blonde hair, blue eyes, soft hands. She doesn’t see FP watching. She doesn’t know.

Good ol’ Fred is the one who tells him, “Alice is gone,” who bandages his knuckles as he sweats out the rum. Fred is going to be a college boy.

FP is not an outlaw king, and he is tired of trouble. He wants to be a college boy, so he’ll have to join the army.

He will be a hero. He springs open his brand-new silver lighter, engraved with his initials and the American flag, and watches a cigarette burn.

**verse four**

FP flies to the desert with the army. He spends three days in the desert. There is a lot of blood.

He has a shrapnel scar in his shoulder, and the world rings and rings. The doctor shines lights into FP’s eyes and ears, makes them twinkle, and says, “They don’t work right. You can’t balance. Go back to your hometown.”

But he’s not a hero, nor an outlaw king. He asks himself, “Who am I? What is there to return to?” Fred is a college boy, and FP is the only Forsythe Pendleton Jones.

He will buy a brand-new motorcycle and drive up the highway. He will be an easy rider. 

**verse five**

At the side of the highway, there is a girl in a green dress with a ruffle hem, clutching a backpack full of books like contraband. She looks at him like he is a football star, an outlaw king, a hero, an easy rider. She puts one palm over the scar on his shoulder, the other over the ink on his chest, and kisses him, gentle.

He thinks she is an angel. She will be the making of him. She hops on his motorcycle and says, in her angel-voice, “I am not an angel. I’m a pretty little pixie, and I will be an outlaw queen.” He lets the vrooming motorcycle answer. They speed down the highway to his hometown, and her black hair floats around her face. 

**verse six**

His angel’s face is round, and her belly is round. FP leads the black-haired girl to the quarry, where they sway under the moonbeams, no space between their bodies. Springsteen sings, “You ain’t a beauty, but hey, you’re alright,” and FP closes his eyes, wishing the hands on his back were not so gentle.

He stares at a bottle of rum and thinks, “I don’t want to be Forsythe Pendleton Jones.” He puts on a leather jacket and walks through the glowing neon light. He springs open his old switchblade.

He names his son Forsythe Pendleton Jones, and orders his son to love him more than his father did. He tells the boy stories of serpents. He hands him a crown hat and says, “You are a prince because I am a king.” He leaves and comes back and leaves and comes back.

His son watches him, quiet, frowning, clutching books like contraband. 

**verse seven**

His angel’s face is round, and her belly is round. Her black hair is tied back. FP wraps his Sherpa jacket around her shoulders and takes her to the diner, where they sip one milkshake with two straws. He lifts a cherry to her mouth and says, “Your lips are the same red,” but he is thinking of a blonde girl’s red nails.

At the lumberyard, good ol’ Fred tosses him a bandage for the scrape on his hand. His hands smell like wood dust; he has thrown out his cigarettes and his old silver lighter. He chews gum now. He is an everyman, a washed-up football star following the orders of a college boy.

FP twists open a bottle of rum and springs open his old switchblade. His angel is not an angel but a pixie, after all; her wings are too small to hold him in. She flies away with his jellybean. In the letter she leaves behind, she scolds him in cursive, “Get your head out of the clouds, out of the bottle, out of those songs. Be an honest man, a husband, a father.” She implores him, “Look in the mirror. You’re FP Jones. Make that enough.”

He makes the rum carry him into the clouds. When he looks into the mirror of the bar, cloudy, decorated in scribbles and stickers of serpents, he sees his clean-shaven face through the blur of graying stubble. He smiles his crooked rascal smile, handsome as any movie star’s, the one that makes the girls watch him as they share milkshakes with other boys. He flexes his rough, wrinkling hands and sees soft skin, no blood. He hears the vrooming motorcycle. He thinks, “This is better.”

When he staggers into the trailer, singing Springsteen, his son frowns over top of the book in his hand. His son leaves and comes back and leaves and comes back. 

**verse eight**

When a red-haired man walks through the glowing neon light, matches FP’s stories of serpents with stories of maple, explains what he will do for the maple, FP tells himself, “It’s just a little blood.” He will be a hero for his son.

When his son rides down the highway on a motorcycle, a switchblade in one pocket, the other full of crisp and folded tens and twenties, FP tells himself, “Forsythe Pendleton Jones will be an outlaw king, after all.”

When the blonde girl with the blue eyes comes back to him, FP tells himself, “It’s just a little blood.” He will be a hero for his son, for his princess-turned-Acid Queen-turned another man’s wife. He throws out his gum, and she scratches his back with her red nails, just how he likes it.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Reading the others in this series is not necessary, but it will add much more dimension to this, because they all reference one another.
> 
> This was inspired by Patti Smith’s “Horses,” specifically the following lines:
> 
> “Johnny wanted to run, but the movie kept moving as planned.”
> 
> “Across the tracks and the name of the place is you like it like that.”
> 
> “Got to lose control and then you take control. Then you're rolled down on your back and you like it like that.”
> 
> “The possibility was a blade, a shiny blade, I hold the key to the sea of possibilities.”
> 
> “Looked at my hands, and there's a red stream.”
> 
> “Angel looks down at him and says, “Oh, pretty boy, can’t you show me nothing but surrender ?”  
> Johnny gets up, takes off his leather jacket. Taped to his chest there's the answer. You got pen knives and jack knives and switchblades preferred.”
> 
> “I put my fingers through her silken hair and found a stair. I didn't waste time, I just walked right up and saw that, up there, there is a sea, the sea's the possibility.”
> 
> “Shined open coiled snakes white and shiny twirling and encircling. Our lives are now entwined, we will fall, yes, we're together twining.”
> 
> “You ain’t a beauty, but hey, you’re alright” is a line from Bruce Springsteen’s “Thunder Road.”
> 
> Thank you so much for reading! Please let me know what you think via kudos or comments! As always, I am open to constructive criticism.


End file.
